Punches and Ejections Mar a Yankees Loss in Detroit

DETROIT — Just as the Yankees thought they might keep beating up on the Tigers and get out of town, their series finale on Thursday devolved into a bench-clearing brawl, two on-field stare-downs, four hit batters — including one who took a 98-mile-an-hour fastball to the head — and the ejections of eight players and coaches.

If that did not leave the Yankees sore enough, they also lost the game, 10-6.

The flash point of the tension was a fight between Yankees catcher Austin Romine and the Tigers star Miguel Cabrera that touched off a full-scale brawl between the teams. Cabrera went chest to chest with Romine before shoving him, sparking a wild exchange of punches and wrestling matches near the plate. Both Cabrera and Romine were ejected, but the trouble did not end there.

An inning later, Yankees reliever Dellin Betances — one pitch into his appearance — hit Tigers catcher James McCann in the head with his second, a fastball that clanged off the side of McCann’s helmet. Betances, emphatically professing his innocence in what was then a tie game, was also ejected — joining a group of Yankees that eventually included pitcher Tommy Kahnle, Manager Joe Girardi and the bench coach Rob Thomson.

Cabrera, pitcher Alex Wilson (who hit the Yankees’ Todd Frazier in the eighth) and Manager Brad Ausmus (tossed with Wilson) were ejected for the Tigers.

After the game, a still-agitated Girardi placed the blame squarely on the plate umpire Carlos Torres and the crew chief Dana DeMuth for not taking control of the game. Girardi said Torres should have warned both teams after Tigers pitcher Michael Fulmer hit Gary Sanchez in the fifth inning — and DeMuth should have warned Kahnle instead of ejecting him after he threw behind Cabrera in the sixth.

“I mean, pay attention,” said Girardi, who also criticized Torres’s command of the strike zone and complained that Ausmus had directed an expletive at Brett Gardner. “Somebody’s got to pay attention to what’s going on in this game.”

The consequences of the loss clearly fueled Girardi’s frustration.

When the Tigers’ Jose Iglesias broke a 6-6 tie with a three-run double in the seventh inning — a rally that began after Betances hit McCann to put the leadoff hitter on base — and McCann added a solo homer in the eighth, it ensured that the Yankees would return home four and a half games behind Boston, which lost, 13-6, in Cleveland on Thursday night, in the American League East.

There could be further ramifications. Even though he was not ejected, the red-hot Sanchez could be facing a suspension after he charged into the melee and threw at least two punches at Cabrera, who was on the ground. Sanchez was eventually pulled out of the pile by Clint Frazier.

“I was in the dugout; I looked up, and I saw Romine rolling on the ground with the other guys,” Sanchez said through an interpreter. “In that moment, instinct takes over because you want to protect your teammate. That’s your family out there. Everything happened so quickly, it was a blur.”

Girardi said he expects suspensions to be levied against both teams.

“That’s upsetting to me, too, because we’re fighting for something and — again — it was poorly handled,” Girardi said. “And then it got to the heat of the moment, and boys are going to be boys in the heat of the moment.”

The genesis for the day’s ill will came in the fifth when Fulmer, with a base open, hit Sanchez in the thigh with his first pitch. Sanchez had hit his fourth home run of the series in his previous at-bat.

In the sixth, When Kahnle threw a first-pitch fastball behind Cabrera that sailed to the backstop, Torres immediately ejected Kahnle, which sent Girardi sprinting out of the dugout to protest. Girardi gesticulated wildly, pointing his finger and kicking at the dirt before he, too, was ejected.

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Yankees catcher Austin Romine was held back by teammates after being punched by Cabrera. Both players were thrown out, two of the eight ejections in the game.CreditGregory Shamus/Getty Images

The game was about to resume after Aroldis Chapman, Kahnle’s replacement, finished warming up, when Cabrera and Romine began talking. The discussion became more animated, and Romine took off his catcher’s mask. As he did, Cabrera shoved him in the chest, dropped his bat, assumed a boxer’s stance and threw a punch.

Romine tackled Cabrera and took him to the ground as players poured out of both dugouts and sprinted from the bullpens.

“He said, ‘You got a problem with me?’” Romine said. “I said, ‘This isn’t about you.’ And then he pushed me. I felt like he wanted a confrontation, and I tried to defend myself the best I could.”

Cabrera told reporters that he had told an agitated Romine to calm down, but he “tried to act tough and he took his mask off like he wanted to fight.”

Romine and Cabrera were ejected, but Sanchez was not. He delivered a single that scored Gardner to cap the Yankees’ three-run rally and tie the score at 6-6 in the seventh.

The Tigers answered in the bottom of the inning on Iglesias’s three-run double to the left-center-field gap off David Robertson, who had replaced Betances.

Betances was not ejected immediately after hitting McCann in the head, which drew an argument from Ausmus as players again exchanged words. But after the umpires huddled, DeMuth told Betances that he had to leave. Thomson, who came out to argue along with the pitching coach Larry Rothschild and the first-base coach Tony Pena, was also ejected.

“Right away, I said, ‘It slipped, it slipped out of my hand,’” said Betances, who was gesturing to the Tigers dugout. “I’m not trying to hit anybody in the head. You can end somebody’s career that way. That’s not what I’m trying to do. That’s not the type of player I am.”

Even if the umpires — and perhaps even the Tigers — might have taken Betances at his word, DeMuth ejected Betances to maintain control of the game, he told a pool reporter. “I deemed it necessary that he went,” DeMuth said.

Robertson relieved Betances and proceeded to hit John Hicks on the hand — a wayward pitch that was apparently deemed an accident. He then walked JaCoby Jones to load the bases before Iglesias cleared them with his third hit of the game.

But the extracurricular activities were not finished. When Wilson, the Tigers reliever, hit Frazier with a pitch in the eighth, he was ejected, and the benches emptied again. Gardner and Ausmus were jawing at each other until Gardner was pulled away.

“The older you get, the more ornery you get, I guess,” said Gardner, who had four hits on Thursday, his 34th birthday.

Order was restored again and, an inning later, and with the Comerica Park crowd on its feet, the former Yankee pitcher Shane Greene struck out Sanchez for the final out.

Correction:

An article on Friday about the Yankees’ brawl-filled 10-6 loss to the Detroit Tigers misspelled, in some editions, the surname of the Detroit pitcher who hit Gary Sanchez in the fifth inning. He is Michael Fulmer, not Fullmer.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: A Game of Wild Swings Gets Down and Dirty. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe